Steven Pinker: Why Smart People Believe Stupid Things

I'm Michael Mahan for the Free Press in New York and this is honestly today I'm sitting down with cognitive psychologist Steph Pinker Pinker is the author of nine books including Enlightenment now the case for reason science humanism and progress and rationality what it is why it seems scarce and why it matters we talk about why smart people are prone to believe conspiracy theories the moral Panic around Ai and how the world is getting better [Music] let's talk about um misinformation I mean I started the rationality book and you know we talked about misinformation very quickly

well the first couple Pages why do we believe things that are wrong and things that are demonstrably false yeah um we um I I would turn the question around that when it comes to things that don't impinge in our day-to-day lives uh where by the way I think we don't tend not to believe things that are wrong if they if there's no food in the fridge people don't tend to hallucinate food in the fridge they go out to the store and they buy some food um but when it comes to things that uh that are

grander more abstract more Cosmic uh who really makes decisions in corporate boardrooms in the white house uh what is the ultimate cause of Fortune and Misfortune and and suffering what is the origin of Life what is the origin of the planet what is the history of this country um uh people people's beliefs don't affect the conduct of their lives for most of human history you couldn't know and so what we contented ourselves with with was mythology uplifting Tales morality tales that single out of a a villain that glorify Our Heroes that get the kids to

believe in in morally uh uh salubrious values and beliefs and the default in in human belief for this Zone outside of what it impinges on them is you pick the best story uh because no one could find out there was no science there's no historical archives there's no responsible journalism so we grown up in an era since the enlightenment where we expect that you can find out these things that there is a truth to be found that that's what we have why we have science that's why we have investigative uh journalism that's why we have

professional historians but it's just not the natural human way of thinking and so I would flip the question around is how do you get people uh to the mindset that presumably you and I share that know you can't believe anything you want some things are true and there's really it really as virtuous to believe things that are true by our best lights but is that something that's been static over the years or are we in a worse place or a better place now I mean you have a number of people that point to technology and

say this is screwing everything up and then you look backwards and you say well you know we've always had conspiracy theorists we've had John Birch Society we've had these things for years is it just that more people have access to this now because of the internet and social media or are we better off than we were previously yeah it's a good question there was a there has been a study so I I try to base answers to questions like that and other questions of you know have things gotten better or worse on you know do

we actually have data sets that could could lead to an informed answer to the question uh the the only one I know of is a research named Joseph yosinski looked at letters to the New York Times and I think other papers over a 100e span and found no change in the proportion of conspiracy theories uh however um I think his investigation ended in 2010 prior to the explosion of social media so we don't know if things have gotten worse there but it is a constant Temptation there have been of course anti-semitic conspiracy theories for right

uh and and uh um anti- Catholic conspiracy theories and anti-f Freemason conspiracy theories um obviously we saw a huge rise and again this is not data this is my my hunch during covid-19 which makes a certain amount of sense right we're all stuck at home right a pandemic that we don't understand scientists don't understand it and there was an effort by a lot of people to say the the truth is static from the very beginning yeah and we don't want people going outside of that and let's take them off of YouTube demonetize them take them

off of Twitter um and just in some ways just kind of Shame some of these people uh is that an effective way way I mean I I suspect that people have less trust trust in science now I I think that's right I mean I think I don't even think that was the most egregious instance probably the most egregious was telling people that um you should not get together in crowds for um U Maga rallies but it's okay to get in crowds for black lives matter rallies because the cause is so much uh more just it's

a I remember the person defended this who said it is a type of um pandemic racism yes right okay so I mean that that is a way of signaling um blaring uh that the public health establishment is uh is is is a house organ of the political left uh that you I don't know how widely that message was uh was uh received but it would be absolutely toxic to the idea that the public health establishment is a disinterested source of information about public health but you're right that the demonetization the uh the um platforming was

wrong for a couple of reasons what just wrong as a as a precedent that is if you do have protected speech again there are exceptions like you fraud and extortion and sexual harassment none of these were those um so just a bad precedent but even worse we now realize that some of the so-called misinformation may have been closer to the truth than the um advisories from the public health establishment now this doesn't mean that the public health establishment was um uh corrupt or conspiratorial it just means everyone is fallible about everything we start out in

a state of ignorance the ration Alpha free speeches that's how we learn stuff and we now realize that many of the advisories of make your own cloth mask or um or don't wear a mask initially you don't wear a mask save them for the surgeons uh or you many this the social distancing restrictions closing down beaches uh keeping kids that was a wild one in playgrounds yeah so I mean the idea people reasonably thought what they're trying to do is exert control when something that is patently has no redeeming purpose in terms of Public Health

yes but it uh and but it has some it has some kind of uh it's a tribal thing in the sense that when I saw people and still do uh wearing masks outside it's usually in a social class in an area I spent a year in on on sabatical and there you'd see people on bicycles with a mask and no helmet yeah so getting it exactly backward get into the probability thing in the rationality book right yeah right but you so some of how are we going to know if if uh some of the advisories

are wrong it's because some people say they're wrong and we got to you know show whether they are they themselves are wrong so is there a rationality to conspiracy theory sometimes I mean do people get pushed towards conspiracy because the public health establish or you know any establishment does a series of things that invite suspicion and the average person is just going to be like you know I I I imagine there's some big kind of apparatus that's trying to screw me over is there a slight rationality to conspiracy theory sometimes it depends it depends on

the conspiracy theory I mean if it's just like you know two government officials both trying to hide something well you know that happens all the time conspiracy uh or you or four uh but if it's you 911 was faked the so-called truther movement then it's the conspiracies are Preposterous on the face of them in terms of how many things would have to go perfectly for the conspiracy both to succeed and be undetected since you know no stings no defectors no screw-ups and we know what can go wrong will go wrong and for you know 137

steps to go perfectly yeah is pretty that's what I got from from the rationality book is that is that you know as you expand the number of things involved you know the the better well the better the story less likely it is because a good story has lots of detail fleshing it out and of course every detail you add multiplies the uh the probability and multiplying that is a number less than one by another number less than one resulting in a still smaller number this is something pointed out by Amos fski and Daniel Conan in

their uh famous conjunction fallacy where um I mean the the example now kind of known to every uh intro student and for that matter reader of Conan's bestseller Thinking Fast and Slow is if you present a stereotype like Linda a bit of an anachronistic name it's kind of a baby boomer name we'll still call her Linda uh she's you know social justice Warrior and anti-nuclear and black lives matter and major in philosophy very bright and articulate what is what is the probability that she is a bank teller they say what is the probability she's a

bank teller and activist active in the feminist movement people say well it's more likely just a feminist bank teller than a bank teller which of course violates the law of probability that the probability of A and B has to be less than the probability of of a uh but we get captured by um by stereotypes truscon called it representativeness but we can just call it thinking in by stereotype and not taking into account um base rates probabilities now the way this plays itself out in uh conspiracy theories but not just conspiracy theories also for lawyers

Arguments for the prosecution or defense is you spin a plausible story and again contradicting the law of probability laws of probability that say every detail you add to a story has to reduce the probability that the entire story is true yeah as uh recept audience is receptive to a good story The more details you add the more plausible the story is and the higher the probability people give it now the the other the added absurdity to most conspiracy theories aside from the fact in addition addition to the number of things that have to go right

for the conspiracy to have succeeded is that usually part of this conspiracy is a massive attempt to suppress the truth and here are these guys you know on their card tables on street corners and you know publishing handing out leaflets and how come how come they haven't been sent to the gulag if they if there is a conspiracy to to to hide hide the truth yeah I I mean it's it's it's it's an odd thing I mean if you really want to ruin a dinner party which I really enjoy doing you can say something that

sounds pretty inoffensive that Lee Harvey Oswald shot John off Kennedy that you're the crazy one in the room right yes right it is very hard I mean that is a conspiracy theory that is believed I think by 75% of Americans that is true in the power of an Oliver Stone movie or just the popular culture can really make people forget about probability and say that all of these things that would have to happen um it's it's it's nearly impossible when Le Harvey Oswald who had previously two months before tried to kill General Walker in the

one of the heads of the John Burch Society you know seems seems pretty obvious well it's true and it really just show the difference between our um thirst for uh accurate truth and our thirst for a good story because the thing is that the candy s it's it's a it's a crummy Story I mean some pathetic schmuck kills the leader of the Free World much beloved I mean what kind of kind of stupid story is that now of course the fact that it's true uh is is often just doesn't register I'd rather believe the story

that they're you know nefarious forces so why do people believe these things I mean why do smart people believe these things yeah I mean smart people believe very stupid things everybody knows the George Orwell quote something so dumb only an intellectual could believe it what is that what is the Instinct that make people people believe in general smart people tend to be more resistant to um cognitive Illusions fallacies and biases one exception being the my side bias namely you give a pass to errors in a um uh in an argument that uh that that is

uh makes your own Coalition look good and makes the other Coalition look stupid and evil and there people in the left and right are equally susceptible and it is more or less independent of intelligence it goes back to the artificiality of the moment which we we think we're living in at least or we like to live in namely that you can determine the truth about who killed JFK that is you know there's forensics there's arguments like Gerald postner you pretty convincing but for uh for most of History you the the documentary record the uh the

forensics the ballistics you know all that the zap rder film none of that was available and so uh it almost was as we would say kind of an academic exercise what really happened because you know no one could know yeah um if no one could know then should you believe anything no you believe the story that serves the greater moral purpose whether the moral purpose is exposing the um corrupt powerful forces that dominate us or um expose the the nefarious conspiracy or they teach the young the right moral values uh and the question is why

don't people I think why don't intelligent people trust what you and I would call credible more credible sources like uh a journalist like Gerald Posner like the Warren Commission as flawed as it may have been but still you know they probably came to the right conclusion uh like science when science is functioning properly like Academia when it's functioning as it ought to function the problem of course and the reason that academic freedom for me is such a uh a vital issue is universities are squandering the trust that uh would lead to accepting beliefs that are

likelier to be true as are many journalistic outlets in in the misinformation stuff when people say we have to combat this I mean I winse a little bit because I kind of like the market to combat it in a way and there usually seems to be some ideological component to the combating of misinformation I think we and we you know I think we've seen that in the fact that a lot of covid misinformation turns out to be if not truth not obviously false yeah what do you make of the that argument that um you know

it was misinformation that allowed Donald Trump to win the election in 2016 you know allowed his supporters to be diluted about the election that he lost in 2020 Etc yeah I you know I think the the uh it's an empirical question um there there are analyses such as by Brendan Brendan Nyan a political scientist that in fact the uh impact of fake news was was negligible that uh it didn't get to that many people and the people that you know Pope Francis endorses uh Donald Trump so how many people saw that and how many people

believed it other than people who are kind of cuckoo Trump Fanatics in the first place um and so there may have been something of a moral panic over disinformation or misinformation for in in 2016 the certainly stopped the steel is based on actually I think it's probably doing it uh too much service to call it misinformation it's just it's a lie yeah yeah which is made up yeah I used to have this conversation with people um you know about people like Alex Jones they would presume that oh this this Alex Jones video had two million

views are those two million people who agreed with Alex Jones or are they like me who watched it and said this guy's out of his mind the presumption is that people watch that and they agree with it yeah and also that the people who tune in and and watch it would have have their minds Changed by him as opposed to having those beliefs in the in in in the first place yeah uh because we do have we we do have filters uh for credibility of the source corroboration by other sources now if you're a True

Believer uh you choose not to uh exercise those those filters but you know most of us we aren't weren't born yesterday and I don't think language would have evolved in the first place if it was that vulnerable to spreading misinformation that is if anything someone said immediately got implanted in your brain in your belief box and from then on you believed it we just would not listen to to anyone because we'd be too easily manipulated this is an argument from the cognitive psychologist Ugo merer in his book not born yesterday uh and it's a reason

to not panic about deep fakes um they couldn't be misused at the margins uh but since they've become fairly widely available there are very few cases in which they've swayed any opinion in any direction simply because uh you know people don't automatically believe them and and they're very quickly debunked quickly debunked yeah yeah and sources do exercise some discretion let's hope they they continue to uh at least sources like the you know CNN and and the The Wall Street Journal in the New York Times a lot of the stuff that they publish may not uh

turn out to be true but still you're better off believing them than than Alex Jones's website for example yeah where are we as a world now it's a big question but I mean view in some ways the enlightenment book as an accidentally anti-m Maga book in the sense that there's a lot of stuff about free trade in there I mean you look at these enormous precipitous declines in poverty um the increases in life expectancy and you say wow this is a miracle yeah and then you realize that it's you know along with countries opening up

I mean Vietnam China India Etc and those closed economies previously closed economies uh pulled a lot of people out of poverty but we're in a moment that both Democrats and Republicans are in a protectionist mercantilist kind of mindset yeah in you know all this stuff has done so such such great things for the world it seems like we're trying to double back on that now yeah um it's uh so since since I wrote The Enlightenment now went to press in uh 2017 you know I still try to keep track of Trends and you know some

some have gotten a bit worse there have been um homicide rat have gotten worse um war deaths have gotten a bit worse de democracies have gotten a bit worse um uh global trade as a proportion of uh gross World product has gotten a little worse assuming that trade is a good thing um not as it hasn't undone the progress but it's gone in the wrong G SL down it's G slow either slowed down or in some cases gone a bit in the wrong direction wiping out a decade or two of progress part of the argument

of Enlightenment now and before that better angels of our nature is that um over the course of history what we might call Enlightenment values have uh uh increased and they have been that is human rights and democracy and uh open economies um um science is a way of knowing but and that the rise of those values has had benefit benefits to the world such as disease and child mortality and maternal mortality and extreme poverty uh uh going down and War uh those are two different arguments one of them is that Enlightenment values increase and the

other is that Enlightenment values cause the world to be better in terms of measuring uh actual outcomes uh the uh there's no law that says they have to keep increasing and we know that there are the values that is the whole Enlightenment um ideals in some ways does go against features of human nature like tribalism authoritarianism puritanism uh magical thinking uh primitive intuitions of uh essentialism and authoritarianism is you think sort of part of human nature I mean that's that's our general Instinct deference to what people think of as a legitimate Authority yeah is probably

one of the ways in which we we moralize the world John John hey in his moral foundations includes deference to Authority as as kind of one one of the keys available on the keyboard U not everywhere always but I think it's something that that people uh tend to fall into how do you solve our problems well let's entrust a strong leader um so we're vulnerable to that the whole concept of democracy is no it's not that a strong leader just has the wisdom and strength to solve problems it's that we uh need to uh agree

upon a temp someone to temporarily Pride over the uh a council a president uh you know not not a um and that that person wields power only for the betterment of the people that he or or she is is is is is U governing uh that's the whole concept of democracy is not particularly intuitive I think it's intuitive to challenge a a a leader who's arrogated too much power to take him out um but the whole idea of of uh consent of the Govern and Division of powers um freedom of speech has completely unintuitive yeah

so Enlightenment values I think are always pushing uphill um and have a natural tendency to to to to slide back uh if if I'm right and I I don't have the data to to to demonstrate this empirically but the idea would be as the world Retreats from Enlightenment values so too measures of global well-being will go backwards I mean Russia is one of the great examples of this isn't it I mean 1989 90 comes and say well that's the end of the Soviet Empire it's gone the evil empire from 1917 to now I can't believe

it lasted that long and we're going to have flourishing capitalism and then 2000 after a very shaky time with yelson Putin takes over and Russia succumbs yet again to an authoritarianism that it's been used to through its ENT history and people are shocked by this yeah I mean I'm I was shocked by it yeah yeah me too I mean there was so and you're right by the way that in addition I I invoked features of human nature that when things go go south were apt to empower a strong leader uh that that's natural uh the

Democratic mechanisms are not so natural but it may on top of that it may be that some cultures because of their history are more receptive than others and the fact that you Russia had the Zars then the Soviets then Putin yeah may not there may be some historical continuity there but there's always the thing in these countries that they feel like they have to go through the motions of democracy Saddam Hussein used to have elections and it wasn't even plausible 98% of the people true things like the Democratic Korean Republic and the German Democratic Republic

I've always said if it has Democratic and the tit will run the direction it's not going be Democratic you know it's not um you've written a bit about AI yeah um this is the latest moral Panic yeah give me the broad sense should I be worried about this because we see these things with wonder I cannot believe this it's answering me in these fluid answers in chat GPT but oh Lord this could go horribly wrong couldn't it is that am I being too pessimistic about that um yeah I I think so I mean there clearly

could be harms with AI is there are harms with any technology but um but I I don't think that the doomers uh have made a a good case uh that is the idea that um AI will by some accounts inevitably try to take over and and therefore it will extinguish us the way we did uh other species the way we did indigenous peoples so it's not a jobs argument like this will separate that's separate you know that I think you know I think we should be so lucky um you know we'd have to kind of

figure out how people can you know pay pay for food and rent but if there's much abundance then that strikes me as a kind of a smaller problem in fact it has to be a net huge benefit people don't have to do boring dangerous uh jobs uh and instead stuff gets produced things happen for free I mean it's it's amazing especially with a population that's likely to decline yeah but um but granted if we don't come up with new policies whether it's a universal basic income or negative income tax or finding new uses for human

uh uh human capital um you there could be some rough times but it's not the end of the human species are we on the precipice of those times I mean there seems to be a lot of change coming there is I don't think it's going to be that fast so we still do not have um cars that can go from point A to point B and and allow you to read a magazine um even though those have been predicted for a long time I mean my car yells at me when I drive I have a

Tesla I take my eyes off the road and I'm like it's spying on me yelling at me pay attention I'm like no you made this technology so I could read stop it I I have gone through the the same the same experience spying on you it's the stazzy car right uh but the fact that you can't you know read a magazine and let your Tesla drive you to work shows that some these problems can be really hard and the reason that they're hard even when they work a lot of the time is that it's not

good enough to work a lot of the time there there the times that they don't work that you worry about that require human common sense like construction worker holding up a hand painted construction sign telling you about a detour and you got to be able to read the sign and you know Teslas can't read yeah as far as I know um all those edge cases as they say mean that it's really harder than we think to build uh infallible Technologies can you Steelman a case uh that AI is going to produce some negative outcomes and

some harm that we're not really prepared for oh it'll certainly produce negative out comes and harms that we won't prepare for because all Technologies do so that I don't even have to steal man I'll just I'll just say it it's really the the Doomer case that is what is the dumer case the dumer case there there's two versions of it one of them uh is that um just as we um dominated other species sometimes to the point of Extinction um certainly to the point of exploitation uh as we did to many indigenous peoples well AI

is to homo sapiens Homo sapiens is to um the the passenger pigeon uh the other Doomer argument is that um that the values of AI may not be aligned with human values uh so that if a hypothetical AI is given some uh goal to pursue um such as uh eliminate cancer then since Exterminating every last human would be a way of making cancer go away it will kill us all as collateral damage on its way to eliminating cancer or War by the way I I I did not make that up really that's an argument that

that you know smart people make that's not just some internet arum that only smart people could make or that you give an AI a goal of regulating the water level behind a dam and it floods the city because that's the one way to keep the water level as specified that can happen now oh that can happen now yeah technology can screw up quite a bit I mean you see what happened with air buses and things like this I mean this is a common thing right yeah I would imagine be more precise well it' be more

precise and then to to extend the argument uh The Singularity could happen where AI would be would recursively improve its own intelligence it would be so smart that among the things that it could do is figure out how to get smarter and which should make it figure out how to get still smarter and that would include disabling all human efforts to disable it uh it could um include um brainwashing or bribing or manipulating humans to do its bidding when it has not when it is not been empowered by being connected to you know the Grid

or the net or or or actual machinery and so it could recruit armies of people to uh pursue its goals and those goals may come at the expense of human well-being is that I mean this is dystopia science fiction but is that possible could that ever happen well the thing is if if if you think that it's a coherent that the sing Singularity is coherent that recursively improving one's own intelligence is coherent uh then that I I I then maybe I I think it's not coherent yeah because I think it is extrapolating from smarter to

infallible and omniscient uh I I think there a number of things wrong with the arguments these arguments one of them is that just because you're smarter doesn't necessarily mean that you have an urge to dominate in Homo sapiens intelligence comes bundled with aggression and dominance and all the other nasty traits that we uh came saddled with because we're the product of of a competitive process natural selection but if something is designed there's no reason that it should want anything it wants what we tell it to want that wanting something and being smart to know how

to get it are two completely different things uh it it's not the case that like in in in myths like the Golem and the Sorcerer Apprentice and so on that as you get smarter that kind of Stokes a thirst for for for power for dominance that I think is a human projection and as I kind of put it we we know that there are uh creatures that are capable of uh Advanced High Intelligence without the urge to dominate and conquer they're called women so as just as one example or those enough old enough to those

old enough to remember Al caps uh Schmo the uh Cartoon figures who were um had extraordinary powers but they were also extraordinarily altruistic so they would barbecue themselves for the pleasure of human diners they would just bring about a Utopia that is no more or less plausible than an AI Conquistador or me megalomaniac so that's one thing um another is that the um scenarios of uh giving an a system a single goal and it not occurring to you that there there could be side effects is just so patently idiotic that I'm just not worried about

people accidentally doing it yeah engineering consists of uh carrying out multiple conflicting goals you got a car with a engine that makes go fast as possible and you also put in brakes and a steering wheel you know and catalytic conver converter and all the rest that's what engineering is a a a system that was uh first of you the system that was smart enough to figure out that one way of eliminating cancer is eliminating humans for one thing that's not artificial intelligence that's artificial stupidity because uh bringing about a uh multiple simultaneous goals is what

intelligence is if you uh single-mindedly pursue one goal at the expense of everything else yeah that is idiocy it's not intelligence it's double idiocy because the system would be idiotic and any any engineer who would build a system like that would be you know more idiotic as human input I mean yeah well yeah who who's who's giving it the goal exct and who would be um moronic enough to both Empower and direct I think of few I don't think there so here's AI safety don't let them have access to the the uh the grid okay

so AI is not going to destroy us that I mean so there plenty of smart people we are going to destroy ourselves that is the argument that I hear a lot from a lot of people I mean like nuclear war nuclear war we're on the precipice of nuclear war or environmental disaster so let's not worry about the robots let's worry about ourselves well I think we uh I I think worrying about ourselves should be a higher priority like making nuclear uh weapons uh harder to deploy accidentally making leaders less uh empowered to wield the nuclear

Arsenal um uh capriciously or or impulsively you know I think those are are very worthy goals and I think even longer term worthy goal is getting rid of them and this was an argument against your book was called it ca lot of controversy the better angels of our nature which basically says Wars are less frequent deadly than they've been at any time despite the fact that you think otherwise some of the counterarguments one of which is just that yeah might be fewer of them but we have nuclear weapons everywhere and we could have one and

destroy everything in one go what do you what do you make of that argument well that that is possible and you know in that sense that's a a new risk that we didn't have more than 75 years ago um and it's a risk that we should do something about yeah yeah yeah but that doesn't you don't think that sort of invalidates the argument in any way well no it's it's it's a different argument that is there are the wars that that that do happen there's a war that might happen and the wars that do happen

happen less often and are less deadly the a war that could happen um could be worse so you want to combine those into one statement it I think it's kind of apples and oranges uh I think they're both true and we've got to figure out what how to make sense of both of them I think there's evidence of the thesis of your book when you see young people who have seen nothing in life but they're smart enough to get into very August institutions telling me the genocide is happening um with a small number of people

relative to say Syria where 600 500 600,000 people died um is that because people just don't have a sense of what war has been in the past uh I think it's a um it's a case where the mys side bias uh where just the the the drive to moralize uh just obliterates rational consideration I mean the not only in in terms of magnitude was Syria much way worse than Gaza Gaza by the standards of measuring War Gaza is at least so far is a what you call small war that is it kills in the it's

killed in the tens of thousands now that's that's horrible and each one of those deaths is is a tragedy but there are you know there have been Wars of kill in the hundreds of thousand thousand such as the Syrian Civil War you know in the millions and then the world war is killing the tens of millions um but so there's that Dimension but in addition there is a huge difference between um people getting killed in the course of a war designed to achieve other objectives and people being targeted for murder in order to murder those

people as a group as a group or or as a lot of individuals but but yes as a group which is really what defin what genocide means the uh application of the word genocide to refer to tens of thousands of war deaths is I mean I think it is a kind of blood liel it's trying to import the moral appropri that we associate with genocide to a uh the designated enemy in this case uh Israel uh I think because of where I I alluded to my side bias the sides in this case being the sides

that are that a lot of um uh hard-left critical uh theory has defined namely White oppressors against uh uh everyone else's victims MH which ignores the Mahi majority population in Israel but yeah among other things but I mean is this I mean you say it's a blood liel I mean it's pretty strong to say this is like a blood liel well it is it is a blood liel in the sense that it is an accusation of deliberate murder yeah uh ill-founded in that the and one could disagree with uh Israel's campaign against Gaza we could

say that this is not justifiable it's not a just War it's still different from deliberately murdering as many people as possible as in and and we know there have been genocides no I think I I you know I think it really is a terrible blood liable and it's a uh uh a sign of how people's moralizing in the service of demonizing and uh dichotomizing dividing the world into good good and evil can just uh flatten their ability analyze and to to think clearly now it's often said that that that mental health is getting worse particularly

among young people um what do you make of that argument initially I was skeptical of the um hypothesis from John height and Jee twang that it was uh because of the rise of social media um although I think they've made a stronger and stronger case uh when I first read it there there's a lot I didn't give it much Credence but now I I would give it stronger Credence I would add though um that uh the uh routine pathologizing of ordinary human emotion where every setback is a trauma where every difference is a um neuroatypical

condition yeah um the which height and Greg lukanov have identified as the three great law lies uh whatever doesn't kill you makes you weaker always trust your emotions and the world may be divided into good and evil uh which they argue is the diametric opposite to uh what cognitive behavior therapy tries to accomplish it being one of the most successful forms of therapy that that um that that set of three great untruths may have had as much of a role as U the the like button on uh Facebook I would add another things I tend

to think that the Doom mongering of mainstream media uh the the which is easier and easier when everyone on Earth is an on thepot reporter and and when many media uh cultivate their own negativity bias to give the worst possible spin puts a PA over the future uh that I think uh impacts the mental health of large numbers of people one of the things even though I I I sometimes joke that uh even though a lot of people hearing that I'm a psychologist mistakenly believe that I'm in the process of making people mentally healthy that's

you know that's not what I do uh but I may have finally earned that title by accident because people do write to me and they say gee when I see those those data and I see that uh things aren't as bad as the headlines lit uh I I found it easier to get up in the in bed in the morning I I'm a teacher I find it easier to motivate my students so I I do think that you don't want to lie to people you don't want to just say put on a happy face but

when the the the best understanding of the world also happens to be less pessimistic than the headline by headline you know Doom scroll then we ought to promote accuracy that also is more optimistic I turned on television yesterday MSNBC and uh Joe Scaro was saying you know we're we're close to ending our Democracy in America democracy is almost we're just about to be out the door a lot of negative stuff right negative stuff sells clicks yeah views Etc tell me why I should not be worried by that kind of headline bias in that things are

maybe not as dire maybe you maybe you don't think that but do you think they're as dire as all these people who say you know we're very close to losing our democracy yeah I mean I think it's it it is something to worry about because worrying about foreseeable risks as a way of making them less likely to happen which I think we ought to do um and the current prediction markets give which I think are more reliable than polls give give uh Trump at this point a 50 a chance what we don't know is um

what will happen of course between now and election day what will be the outcome what will be the effects of any say criminal con convictions we don't know uh how much Trump will actually try to implement if he does uh get get get inaugurated uh we don't know how much the system will uh push back as it did say after January 6th where 60 something trials rejected the um the the the the lawsuits um so it's uh the danger is that he'd be undermining those very um safe guards um there's a robustness in our system

that didn't exist in say the viar Republic right yes yes uh we both economically both in terms of the strength of the government um the uh you I think Civil War is extraordinarily unlikely they Civil Wars tend to occur in uh poor countries with weak governments where a rich compan country with a strong government and for all of the distrust of Institutions people you by and large trust the the post office and social the agency that sends out Social Security checks and um the the U traffic police and so on so I don't think there's

enough hatred of the establishment to allow a genuine Civil War to occur uh but still I think we should uh Implement measures to prevent that from happening because they won't be stopped by themselves take prophylactic measures but I mean maybe along the way stop telling people that fascism is just about here yeah I I think uh to consider how many things would have to happen for us to for for that label to be appropriate it's all about probability in the end isn't it it's all it's all about probability is that the most important thing that

I should take away from my conversation with you and reading your books that probability tells you more about you know the past the future Etc than than almost anything else probabil and uh and data as best from trustworthy uh agencies yes yeah Steven pener thank you so much thank you